Brown Edwards & Co., LLP needed to streamline operations in order to reduce the time spent on tax returns, use the lowest level of staff for each step and boost its profit margins. The firm implemented several solutions within the CCH® ProSystem fx® Suite to improve efficiency, get visibility into operations and reduce the time partners spend reviewing returns. Visit CCHGroup.com/ProSystemFX to learn more.

1. Tax & Accounting
CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Suite
Improved Efficiency by
More Than 10 Percent for
Brown Edwards & Co., LLP
Case Study:
Digital Tax
Workflow
When you have to be right

2. CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Suite Improved Efficiency by More Than 10 Percent for Brown Edwards & Co., LLP2
Focused on Smarter Workflow
Brown Edwards & Co., LLP Certified Public
Accountants has about 270 employees in nine
offices located in Virginia, West Virginia and
Tennessee. It’s one of the largest independent
CPA firms in the Virginia/West Virginia region.
Thanks to flexibility offered by technology,
some of the firm’s staff members even work
remotely in other states, including Michigan,
Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
“Because of the flexibility of
the software and the way
it’s integrated and the way
that our firm is structured,
it doesn’t matter where our
staff members are. Our staff
can work from any office,
even a home office.”
— Laura Sprouse,
Partner, Firm Administrator,
Brown Edwards & Co., LLP
Beyond attracting staff from all over the
country, the biggest benefit of Wolters
Kluwer’s software for the firm is the way it
streamlines operations.
“For us, it is just an
unbelievable efficiency and
productivity enhancement.
The software creates all the
forms that we need and
provides the detail we need.
It saves us time because
we don’t manually have to
key information.”
Challenge: Brown Edwards & Co., LLP needed to streamline operations in order
to reduce the time spent on tax returns, use the lowest level of staff for each
step and boost its profit margins.
Solution: The firm implemented several solutions within the CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Suite to improve efficiency, get visibility into operations and reduce the time
partners spend reviewing returns.

3. CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Suite Improved Efficiency by More Than 10 Percent for Brown Edwards & Co., LLP 3
Working Faster through Automation
The CCH ProSystem fx software solutions
streamline the tax workflow by offering
integration across all applications, along
with automation.
Brown Edwards uses CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Tax for tax preparation and compliance, as
well as CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Fixed Assets,
CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Document for document
management and CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Engagement for trial balance and workpaper
management. These solutions work together
to create a seamless tax workflow that is
further automated with CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Scan with AutoFlow technology and
CCH Axcess™
Portal for exchanging documents
with clients. Throughout the process, CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Practice Management allows
the firm to manage its practice through
automatic time tracking, project management
and tracking, and streamlined billing.
The firm has been able to save massive
amounts of time by optimizing operations and
standardizing processes across all offices.
Sprouse cites a few examples:
“We are able to push
information directly out
of the tax return into
CCH ProSystem fx Document
or into CCH ProSystem fx
Engagement because the
tools integrate together.”
Plus, “We can take fixed
asset information and
integrate it directly into our
tax software.”
The firm put the software to
the test to quantify efficiency
improvements.
“We had every
office use all of our
CCH ProSystem fx
Suite tools to their
greatest advantage
to see what gains we
would achieve.”
The results speak for themselves: an 8 to 10
percent efficiency improvement on tax returns
in year one. Offices that had been fully using
the tools achieved an additional 2 to 3 percent
efficiency gain on top of the first-year gains.
Sprouse adds that achieving these gains
required that the firm’s staff members
embrace the features and time-saving tools
built into the software, as well as follow the
same processes across all offices.
“We made sure we’re using
the tools the way that they
were intended to be used, not
just what our preference in
using them was.”
Laura Sprouse
Partner, Firm Administrator
Brown Edwards & Co., LLP
Lynchburg, Virginia

4. CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Suite Improved Efficiency by More Than 10 Percent for Brown Edwards & Co., LLP4
Increased Profitability
Through the CCH ProSystem fx Suite, the firm
has been able to use staff members’ skills
more fully. Here’s how: An intern completes
the initial data entry using CCH ProSystem fx
Scan with AutoFlow Technology to populate
the return. Then a preparer takes over. Finally,
a partner reviews the completed return.
“What CCH ProSystem fx
Scan with AutoFlow
Technology has done is allow
us to push down the level
of work that we’re doing
so that the first review is
performed by the person
who’s actually preparing
the return. Since it’s being
reviewed at this stage, our
firm’s partners know that it
has gone through a review
process by the time it gets to
them, saving them time. This
allows us to achieve higher
profit margins.”
Better Client Communications
CCH Axcess Portal enables the firm to
securely communicate with clients, as well
as automate the document upload process
by exporting it from the tax software with a
click of a button. The software then generates
automatic emails to clients once documents
have been uploaded. Clients can access their
tax documents 24/7 whenever they need them
without having to email the firm.
“It’s a seamless click that can
be pre-built and integrated
with other software. You hit
a button and the return goes
to the Portal or Engagement
or Document. You’ve got these
tools all tied together. Not
just that, you can also tie
CCH ProSystem fx Practice
Management together with
CCH Axcess Portal and the
other software to generate
and post invoices to clients.”

5. Why Choose Wolters Kluwer
The firm recommends that other firms turn to Wolters Kluwer because they are constantly moving
forward with technology. As a strategic partner to professionals, Wolters Kluwer helps advance their
clients’ businesses, by providing innovative, integrated and customer-focused solutions supporting the
workflow of CPAs, corporate tax and accounting departments, tax attorneys and auditors to enhance
productivity and profitability.
“We work with a variety of vendors, and I can honestly say that
Wolters Kluwer tries to be on the cutting edge of technology for
our industry. There are some other vendors out there that are just
dinosaurs that aren’t moving forward. They’re not dynamic. They
don’t have the support. They don’t have the resources that Wolters
Kluwer has been able to provide us over the years.”
CCH®
ProSystem fx®
Suite Improved Efficiency by More Than 10 Percent for Brown Edwards & Co., LLP 5
Visibility into the Firm’s Operations
CCH ProSystem fx Practice Management allows
the firm to see the status of all projects,
as well as automatically track time, which
cuts down on the back and forth between
preparers and admins.
“Admin staff who are
pulling status reports for
projects don’t have to chase
people down to get status
updates. It’s all of these little
pieces made possible by
the software that make us
more efficient.”
The firm is now looking for ways to take
advantage of even more of the software’s
features in order to become more competitive,
profitable and efficient.
“Where we think we’re
going to be headed in the
next couple of years is using
Wolters Kluwer as a strategic
partner to be able to expand
upon the services that we
are providing. Being able to
have one common database.
Being able to extract that
information. Being able to
look at our metrics. I think
that’s all going to be very
beneficial to help us grow in
the next couple of years.”

6. When you have to be right
© 2016 CCH Incorporated and its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Contact information:
Wolters Kluwer
2700 Lake Cook Road
Riverwoods, IL 60015
United States
800-739-9998
Please visit CCHGroup.com/ProSystem
for more information.
7/16 2016-1279